TeaThirty years after formal diplomatic relations were established, ten years after the Arab Spring, which marginalized the Israel-Palestinian conflict, five years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, and two years after Abraham AccordsThe fact that relations between Israel and India have fundamentally changed is no longer open to debate. Or is it? Obviously, there is still someone, not just someone, but a former Indian ambassador to many West Asian countries who thinks that India wants ‘affair’, not serious relationship with Israel,
in his new book West Asia at War: Repression, Resistance and the Great Power GameIn this article, former IFS officer Talmiz Ahmed quotes from a half-decade old article by Israeli researcher Dr. Oshrit Birwadkar to tell his readers that in fact, nothing significant has changed in Israel-India relations. Everything is fleeting.
Till the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, India had a pro-Arab policy and strong commitment For the ethos of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In 1992, India and Israel established full diplomatic relationsBut India preferred not to disclose full cooperation between the countries until 2014. India has historically supported all UN resolutions in favor of the Palestinians.
India just two years before Modi came to power Co-sponsored and voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolution This enabled Palestine to become a ‘non-member observer state’ at the United Nations. Symbolically, the vote was on 29 November, the same date the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor 65 years earlier. Mandatory Palestine Partition Plan, total 13 States vote against partition planTen of which were Muslim states. India was one of the few non-Muslim countries that voted against resolution 181.
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our experience
We were at a special event at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem the day Talmiz Ahmed’s article was published in ThePrint. The Ministry of External Affairs hosted a delegation of 90 entrepreneurs and investors from JITO Incubation and Innovation Foundation of India. Several diplomats, academicians and business personalities presented a comprehensive picture of Israel-India relations.
The wide spectrum of issues India and Israel collaborate on surprised us, even as Israeli writers with unique interests in India. But the event featured not only presentations, deals and statistics. One of the speakers narrated the experiences of Israeli diplomats who came to serve at our embassy in New Delhi. Indian love for Israel cannot be compared to any European country. India’s deep appreciation for the state is not dependent on one government or another, it is alive and kicking among the bureaucracy, various influencers and the general public.
Although it was a private delegation of entrepreneurs to which Israel is accustomed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did everything it could to adopt, including having in-house chefs prepare an elaborate vegetarian buffet that included dishes from Jain kitchens.
Israel’s Ambassador to India, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, Naor Gilone, spoke with the delegation about India and Israel’s tremendous achievements in agricultural cooperation, citing examples of regions that have improved their produce since the adoption of Israeli technologies. tripled or quadrupled. He told them how Israel has more Indian students than any other foreign country, most of whom are pursuing advanced degrees in STEM. He also devoted time to the Intellectual Property Challenge in the Make in India program, which is well known to Israeli Indian entrepreneurs who want to collaborate on business ventures.
Israel’s Consul General in Mumbai, Kobi Shoshani, has been repeatedly praised for his active role in promoting the visit of the JITO delegation. Along with the formal discourse on the decision to sign a free India-Israel trade agreement, there was also an informal discussion on chemistry between Indians and Israelis in the fields of diplomacy, science, tourism, agriculture and of course, security.
JITO President Siddharth Jain told Israeli Foreign Ministry officials about falling in love with Israel. One can have cynicism towards businessmen, wherever they are, but the members of the Indian delegation spoke wholeheartedly. It was quite clear, and it remained as we visited the Old City of Jerusalem after the event was over.
But our goal is not to convince an Indian diplomat that he is wrong about the sentiment, that his chapter on Israel is shoddy, lazy and sometimes in touch with the present reality, that Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel is in fact. I cannot be. compared to a short visit to the Palestinian Authority – one that has been described as ‘a strategy of tokenism,
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India-Israel relations now
We aim to examine how it was that a person without a diplomatic background like Prime Minister Modi, understands West Asia better than an experienced Indian diplomat, for whom WANA (Western Asia-North Africa) was the second home.
It is paradoxical that a politician whom the West has shunned for more than a decade understands better than his diplomats to visit Israel, showing open affection for his right-wing prime minister, a longstanding anti-Israeli tradition. may violate the vote in international institutions – and still for this has not been published by the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. Not a single Indian worker was being deported from Dubai or Bahrain because the Indian prime minister had decided to show his love for the Jewish state, with no sudden UN resolution on Kashmir to be suggested.
Today, we are in the era of alliances like the I2U2 West Asian Quad in the Middle East and it is clear that Israel’s relations with the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, whose relations are yet deliberately informal, are better than the Sunni bloc’s relations with the Palestinians, which are at the lowest level ever. Relations between Israel and Egypt are also perhaps the best since the signing of the Camp David Accord in 1979. Even a delegation from Pakistan was seen here, with PTV newscaster Ahmed Qureshi giving an interview to Ken 11 national television, praising David Ben-Gurion. a state builder. It looks like he was suspended back home, but he retaliated by giving another Zoom interview to Cannes 11, declaring he has no regrets.
But Narendra Modi dramatically changed India’s policy towards Israel, when the tip of the iceberg of the Sunni-Israeli alliance was much smaller than what we see now.
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expression of a mindset
On a broader scale, Talmiz Ahmed is not only a person, but an expression of a mindset: the underlying skepticism of the Western world, the failures of secular dictatorships in the Middle East and the unconditional pardon of crimes, the display of Israel and the Jews as those who Magically controls American policy and power projection, and a deliberate blindness to the admiration established in the Arab world for Israel’s achievements, even at the cost of aligning with some of the most destructive and regressive forces in the entire Muslim world.
Ahmed cannot point to a major collaboration of India with the Palestinian Authority, its businessmen or universities, for the betterment of Indian citizens. What will the Indian diplomacy of decades-long alliance with the Palestinians have to show that alone can compare to what was achieved with Israel in 2022? Perhaps Mr. Ahmed should do a comparative analysis of any text about India across the border in Pakistan studies classes and any text taught in Palestinian schools about Jews and Israel to readers that is more shockingly violent. Does he envision the future?
When outdated ideologies of the most impractical kind are combined with evil prejudices to shape a diplomat’s worldview, they have no real chance to do their professional work and give intelligent and actionable advice to the political arena.
After reading this strange analysis of Israel-Indian relations, we were curious and turned to Dr. Osrit Birwadkar to check whether he still thinks Israel-India relations are just an affair. “No”, she said immediately. His article was published before The Abraham Accords, which finally cleared the Indian dilemma of choosing sides between Israel and the Arab world. Ironically, he drew our attention to the fact that Talmiz Ahmed had misspelled his name as well.
Perhaps in this book, it really is a blessing.
Lev Aran is a former coordinator of the Israel-India Parliamentary Friendship League and an Israel-based independent columnist and journalist. Isaya Rosenman is a freelance journalist and a student of Indian Studies and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)